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Traumatic Home: Argentinian Victimhood and the Everyday Moral Comfort of Trauma
Author(s) -
Roekel Eva
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
ethos
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.783
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1548-1352
pISSN - 0091-2131
DOI - 10.1111/etho.12218
Subject(s) - liminality , morality , everyday life , sociology , ethnography , disposition , dictatorship , perspective (graphical) , aesthetics , social psychology , psychology , epistemology , anthropology , law , philosophy , politics , political science , art , visual arts , democracy
The renewed anthropological debate on morality has invoked the idea that local moralities can be analyzed through the phenomenological arrangement of moral breakdown, which is followed by a liminal period of performing ethics that reinstates the unreflective moral disposition (i.e., home) of everyday life. The ethnographic example of the heterogeneous group of Argentinian victims of the last military dictatorship (1976–83) illustrates how ongoing ethical performance about trauma produces a reflective way of engaging with and in the world. These ongoing ethical performances are coined as “traumatic home” and constitute an everyday reflective moral disposition. From this local perspective, trauma is an intrinsic aspect of being alive that needs ongoing verbalization and reflection. The enduring traumas become expressible and meaningful by means of ongoing, shared practices of truth telling and informal therapies. Thus, by ongoing expression, trauma also becomes an influential source for everyday moral comfort.